In the episode “Ho’oilina (Legacy),” it’s the fourth anniversary of John McGarrett’s death when Steve bumps into Ellie Clayton (All Saints’ Mirrah Foulkes), a woman who helps him reopen the last unsolved case his father worked on. But what is her deeper connection to the elder McGarrett? And could this happenstance meeting bloom into something more?

As showrunner Peter M. Lenkov previously told us of Ellie’s arc, “Everybody [in the press] is selling it as a ‘love interest’ but really, it’s a friendship. She’s going to play a role in his life as somebody who was close to his father…. They both lost a parent very early on [his mother, her own father], so there’s that friendship.”